Young Justice: Brightest Day [Solstice Book Two]

Four

"Dekhie!"

The word echoed down the streets, followed by pointing fingers and shaded eyes. At night, my powers were a sight to see, but during the day, I was as bad as the sun if you looked directly at me while I was flying. 

The people of Delhi cheered as a beam of light stopped the robbers blind in their tracks. As their breaks skid across the road I diverted them from a herd of resting cows and helped a street vendor push his cart out of the way. Millions of rupees went flying everywhere as the robbers rubbed their eyes and cried in pain. They'd recover, their sight would just be blurry for a few days, but no one was violently injured. the phones came out as I covered the robbers in a ball of light, waiting for the police to arrive.

"Dhanyavaad!"

I waved to the little girl who stepped out of the shelter with her parents to wave at me. I blew her a kiss, showering her family with raindrops of light. I took the long way home, looping back around to my family's townhouse just outside of Delhi University Campus, sneaking in through the back window, hidden by the various vines and flowering plants left by the building's previous owner that Baba never could find the time to clear out

"Kiran!" I jumped, as if I was the robber caught doing something wrong. Mum wrapped her arms around me tightly and kissed my forehead. "I saw you on the TV. You looked amazing!" 

She said that every time I came home from super-heroing, but it never got old. I hugged my mother, taking in her wonderful jasmine-scented perfume.

"Baba already left to proctor our last final, I'm headed to a department meeting, and your final final is in an hour." She laughed at her own joke.

"Great! That gives me enough time to shower and change," I was already halfway up the stairs.

"And eat!" Mum shrieked after me. I could hear her muttering a prayer from behind my bedroom doors as I changed back into my day clothes from my superhero uniform.

After a quick shower, I found a peach on the table next to a plate of cheesy naan, still piping hot. I checked my bag for my school ID and several sharpened Number Two pencils, and ate as I strolled briskly across campus to the elegant testing center.

After two hours of trying to remember every detail of parabolas, algorithims, and other calculus-related tidbits, I turned in my test feeling semi-confident and slid down the bannister to the testing center entrance.

"Kiran!" Jai slung his arm around my shoulder, the pencil smudges on his left hand telling me that he'd also just finished a final.

"Hey Jai, hey Lalita," I greeted his girlfriend, and she nodded before returning to her phone.

"What are you doing this summer? He asked, Lita and I were gonna get a bunch of friends up to Dad's beach house. You know, after Arjun and Saira are done with it." He sniggered, and I caught him in the solar plexus with my elbow. Gently, of course. Getting my cousin's vomit out of my hair was definitely not in my plans for today.

"I'll be writing, of course," I continued nonchalantly as Jai struggled for breath, "One of my coworkers said he might be able to get me a column in the Daily Planet."

"The Daily Planet?" Lalita actually looked up from her phone.

"What would you write to the Daily Planet about?" Jai scoffed.

"Style," I nodded definitively, "Or a book review column. Someone needs to show those Baby Boomers that Millennial aren't as hopeless as they think.

"Other than that, probably traveling with Mum and Baba, and visiting Cassie and Kaldur in America."

"Kiran! Jai!" jogging towards us from across the grass were a couple guys whose faces I could vaguely remember, but their names escaped me completely.